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For Comic-Con's street preachers, hate gets results

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Potoooooooo

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http://www.theverge.com/2013/7/26/4557256/for-comic-con-street-preachers-hate-gets-results
As much as costumes and badges, street preachers are a part of Comic-Con. Some simply hand out tracts or display scripture, while others deliver sermons or pepper their signs with topical references. "Don’t be Comic Conned!" reads one. "Your life is not fiction."

The preachers have been there for years, promoting religion next to company booths passing out party invitations or hawkers carrying cans of Coke. But when I first saw them, I didn’t realize that I was about to witness one of the ugliest facets of Comic-Con: the subset of vicious provocateurs who set out to "win" people over by telling them they’re going to burn in Hell... and get the exact reaction they were really looking for.
 
"How many people do you think talk to them?" I heard while sitting in line one day. "They wouldn’t keep doing it if it didn’t work."
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Well, they only have to THINK that it works.
Lke the gay bashers who report conversions secured at a gay pride event, or the people who interrupted a Universalist funeral called it a victory for God.
If they go home and tell each other that they did what God wanted them to, it doesn't matter if they really drove a hundred agnostics to full atheism, they'll be back next year.
 
Atheism gets free publicity from Christian street preachers. Is that dumb or what?


In any case I don't think they'll get many converts if they were kind. I think folks who go to Comic-Con know their fiction, so a zombie Jewish preacher and talking snakes are not precisely going to command belief from lots of people among that crowd.
 
Perspicuo said:
Atheism gets free publicity from Christian street preachers. Is that dumb or what?
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Well, atheists, agnostics, and any Christain geeks who would rather have fun with their peers than evangelize to them.

I mean, you don't have to be an atheist to think that telling convention goers that Spider-Man is fictional isn't the most friendly or open of acts. Or to realize that a sign quoting The Books is just a lightning rod for more creative and more cheerful signage.

I just wish atheists looked as good taking theists to court. OOOH! Maybe that's it!
I wonder how Michael Newdow looks in a Captain America costume?
Have someone dressed as Thor ask the courts to remove 'gods' from the currency? It'll be about as effective, legally, but much better press, visually.
 
This is related to the thread about religious children not being able to tell magical characters aren't real.

They grow into adults who can't tell that magical characters aren't real.

Those adults then go start shit at Comic-con because they think Marvel's Thor, or whoever, is a real and actual god in rivalry with their own.
 
thor-v-jesus_o_1175060.jpg
 
Saw the Scientologists booth this weekend at Tampa's comic-con. The preachers were outside, but only two that I saw. No one was paying them any attention.
 
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